THERE HAS NEVER BEEN, nor can there be, any argument that the greatest practitioner of the locked-room mystery is John Dickson Carr (1906–1977), the American (born and raised in Pennsylvania) who was described as more English than any English author of his time. On a trip abroad, he fell in love with an English girl and moved there because he thought it the ideal place in which to write detective fiction. He wrote so prolifically that he created the pseudonym Carter Dickson (originally Carr Dickson until Harper, his American publisher, objected) for the overflow. Soon after World War II broke out, he produced propaganda programs for the BBC. When a left-wing government was voted into power, Carr returned to the United States to “escape socialism,” as he wrote. After the Labour Party was defeated in 1951, he moved back to England until 1958, when it again took office; he then returned to America permanently.
His most famous detective creation as Carr was Dr. Gideon Fell, who appeared in two dozen novels and numerous short stories. Based on one of Carr’s literary heroes, G. K. Chesterton, Fell is a long-time policeman who has seen so much that the only crimes that interest him are those that have the appearance of being impossible. Carr’s work was so quickly recognized as being superior that he was elected to England’s prestigious Detection Club in 1936 after only a few years in England. He was honored as a Grand Master for lifetime achievement by the Mystery Writers of America in 1963.
“The Wrong Problem” was first published in the August 14, 1936, issue of the London Evening Standard. It was first published in the United States in slightly altered form in the July 1942 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. It was first collected in Dr. Fell, Detective (New York, Mercury, 1947). Note: All printings of this story except the first follow the text of the EQMM appearance.